them crazy.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“At these smallest levels, everything goes woo-woo. A particle can be in two places at the same time. It can move from one spot to another instantly, without traveling through the intervening space.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Even worse is that all of the universe we can see, all that beautiful stuff that shows up in the Hubble telescope photos, isn’t everything. In fact it isn’t most things. Scientists think more than 96 percent of the stuff that makes up the universe is matter and energy we can’t see, or even detect. It’s called dark matter and dark energy.”
“Earth to Jake. What does this have to do with Nazis?”
“So. Some of the Nazis believed in an energy source called the Black Sun, buried at the center of the earth. Woo-woo, right? Except not entirely different from our ideas of dark energy, an energy so mysterious we can’t even detect it.”
“How do we know it’s there?”
“Something’s driving the universe apart faster than it should. That ‘thing’ has been labeled dark energy.”
“And you take these physicists seriously?”
“This is real! Okay, so now there’s this idea that there’s a smaller particle still, something a trillion times smaller than an atom, called a string. It’s a one-dimensional line, meaning it’s so small, this string has length, but no width.”
She groaned. “Where’s my gin and tonic?”
“And then when this string vibrates, it creates everything- everything- the way a vibrating violin string creates music.”
“Music isn’t stuff.”
“This music is. It’s all the stuff, all the energy.”
“Why can’t I hear it?”
“It’s not real music, Rominy. We’re talking metaphor. But you can hear it, too, since if these vibrations make everything-if they’re really the fundamental building blocks of atoms-then they made this jet and your ears and the air the engine noise travels through. It’s like the music of the spheres. The music of the cosmos.”
She shifted in her seat, feeling something hard in her pocket poke her in the thigh. “And Nazis wanted the music.”
“In essence, yes. What if you had a violin bow that could play these tiny, tiny strings and in so doing manipulate reality in ways we could barely imagine? I’m not talking just lead into gold. I’m talking matter into energy, and consciousness into action, and space into time and time into space. I’m talking extra dimensions, because string theorists think there may be a dozen or so we’re not even aware of, besides the usual four. I’m talking about walking through walls and teleportation and, well, magic. The Tibetans believe in tulpa s, or beings created by conscious thought: that we can think things into existence if we understand how the universe really works. I’m talking about extraordinary abilities that the smartest people in the world searched for over many centuries. Wizards, alchemists, priests, and kings. It would be like the bow of God.” He looked at her expectantly.
“Adolf Hitler wanted to play these strings?”
“No, Hitler and the Nazis had no idea they existed. There were these legends of Vril, but no one in Germany had an idea what it really was or how it might be controlled. But since then we’ve had all these amazing discoveries in physics and suddenly this crazy 1930s idea sounds more plausible. What if an ancient civilization somehow figured this out centuries ago? Or some alien civilization came down to earth? What if Shambhala was a research center? Think about it-Tibet is the highest plateau on earth, the closest to angels and aliens, a natural landing point for a visiting civilization. What if someone, at some time, figured out how to play the music of the cosmos, to draw a bow across the fundamental strings?”
“You think this is what my ancestor and the Nazis were after?”
“Yes.”
She thought. “These strings are really small, right? I mean, we’re talking about tiny violins.”
“Teeny-tiny.”
“So this is a tiny bow? Like, I’m not going to pick it up with my fingers?”
“I don’t know. My suspicion is that they forged a great big bow that could play very little strings. You know, what’s come down to us in legends and stories is the idea of a stick-a magic wand, or a wizard’s staff-with magical powers.”
“Like Gandalf.”
“Exactly. And not just fictional wizards. Cardinal Richelieu carried a wand of gold and ivory his enemies thought had special powers. Newton was entranced not just by science but by alchemy and magic, and hunted for ways to transcend normal material boundaries. Nikola Tesla thought there was a connection between the mental and physical planes-mind over matter, if you will. What I think is that these legends have some basis in reality, that Shambhala devised very big tools-compared to subatomic particles-that could play this subatomic music and control the natural world with what we would call magic. What if they really existed? What if they still exist-in a hidden city that your great-grandfather found?”
“Jake, this is starting to sound a little bigger than a newspaper scoop. A little scarier, too. And a whole lot crazier.”
“Conceded. But maybe my weirdness makes a little more sense to you now. I seemed crazy because the story seemed crazy, until your car blew up. That’s when I knew this was real, and you had to be protected.”
“I can protect myself,” she said automatically, even though the idea of a protector was not entirely unappealing.
“Sorry. I mean you needed a partner. A friend.”
She glanced down at the sheaf of diagrams. “You think the skinheads are after these staffs of Shambhala?”
“Yes. Or at least after the idea that there’s something to the Shambhala legend.”
Rominy sat back, thinking. She didn’t know if she was sitting next to a lunatic or Einstein. But then a thought occurred. She knew what had poked her thigh-the empty bullet cartridge she’d found on the floor of Jake’s pickup, behind the seats. Its meaning hadn’t been clear, but all this talk of big things and microscopic things had jarred her memory. She let her fingers touch it, next to her leg, but decided against pulling it out. Instead, she remembered its size. It was small, smaller than she imagined most bullet shells to be.
In fact, the shell was the right size to hold a bullet that would make a small hole just like the one in Barrow’s rear window when they were being chased on the freeway.
What was the shell from such a bullet doing inside Jake’s cab?
Had that gunshot come from assailants she never saw as she was mashed down on the seat? Or from Jake Barrow himself?
Should she challenge him on it?
“Okay, but I still don’t get it, Jake. You got me to go along, get the safety deposit box, find the mine, and retrieve the satchel. That’s my part as the heir, right? Why do you need me now?”
He smiled, putting his hand on hers, covering where that gold ring burned on her finger. “Can’t you tell? I’ve fallen in love with you.”
38
Lhasa, Tibet
September 10, Present Day
L hasa gave Rominy a headache, but then it gave almost all first-time visitors a headache. At nearly twelve thousand feet, it was one of the highest cities in the world. Yet its dizzyingly perched airport was still tucked in the valley of the infant Brahmaputra River, the runway surmounted by taller mountains that glowed like green felt. The sky was a deep blue and clouds drifted overhead like galleons. The topography was so steep that she and Jake had
